Hong Kong Students Keep Up Pro-Democracy Fight in Wake of Protests

One month after a massive pro-democracy protest march in Hong Kong, about 75 university students gathered in front of the city’s police headquarters Saturday demanding democratic reforms and protesting the Hong Kong government’s enforcement of laws against unlawful assembly.

The public’s ability to nominate candidates for Chief Executive, the city’s top post, has been a rallying cry for the students who have been a driving force behind Hong Kong’s pro-democracy forces. However, it has been repeatedly rejected by Beijing and effectively ruled out by the Hong Kong government in their report on constitutional reform, delivered to central authorities last month.

For the city’s first Chief Executive election with universal suffrage, the report favored nominating candidates through a form of the committee currently tasked with selecting the city’s leader, a 1,200-member body stacked with business and pro-Beijing interests.

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“Our goal is to tell the Mainland government that we need civil nomination and will not accept political screening,” said Kathy Wong, a member of the Hong Kong Federation of Students and the student union president at the Hong Kong Institute of Education. “We also hope to support the spirit of civil disobedience.”

On the morning after July’s pro-democracy march, 511 protesters, mostly students, were arrested for staging a sit-in on Hong Kong’s Central business district. Over the past two days, police unconditionally released twenty protest leaders charged with unlawful assembly after they refused to renew their bail at police headquarters, the site of the protest.

Many speeches at the rally defended the students’ civil disobedience tactics, which have been opposed by both government and regular citizens. In his speech, Timothy O’Leary, professor of philosophy at the University of Hong Kong, pointed out that protest leaders, supposed lawbreakers, still returned to police headquarters in accordance with the law. “Students break the law because they respect the law,” he said.

Ms. Wong said the protest was held at police headquarters to show students’ defiance in the face of arrest. “We will not follow [police] orders,” she said. “They don’t have legal meaning. They are just threatening protesters.”

In their remarks to the gathered students, rally leaders said that Saturday’s protest was only foreshadowing what was to come. Student groups have called for mass civil disobedience by the end of August, when the National People’s Congress is due to rule on Hong Kong’s electoral reform plan. What they decide is likely to determine the next steps of the city’s pro-democracy movement, Occupy Central, which has threatened to paralyze Hong Kong’s Central business district through civil disobedience if the plan is not considered democratic enough.

“Today, there may only be a few of us,” said Martin Lee, founder of the Hong Kong Democratic Party, at the rally. “But one day, when we really Occupy Central, there will certainly not be a few.”

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